After a 15 year hiatus it felt good to leave the bonds of Earth again. This was a classified mission from the DoD and this was my first flight on the Space Shuttle. I also had my first EVA on this flight which was used to experiment with my hyperbeam in the vacuum of space, though it epically failed and almost killed us. On the ascent Atlantis sustained substantial damage to the Thermal Protection System, I think the final count was a 700 tiles damaged with one completely gone. The most infuriating part about it was the fact that we tried to convey the distressing nature of the condition of the tiles and that the was a significant chance Atlantis would not survive re-entry. We requested to have the contingency mission enacted which would have had Columbia come save us and scuttle Atlantis into the upper atmosphere but ground controllers didn't think the problem was that serious, so in the early morning of December 4th we fired the OMS and initiated the de-orbit burn and we read Matthew 6:9-13 and said our goodbyes because we honestly thought we were not going to come home; But nine hours later we had wheels stop on runway 17 at Edwards Air Force Base. Later I gave the launch controllers a tongue lashing of the century, but I guess what I told them didn't stick...

Launch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNvh19bbsJY (I am not on the crew roster because I was technically still classified)

Orion's Reference Sheet-http://www.furaffinity.net/view/11720149/

Art ©  alishka
Orion ©  germanpanzer
Lugia © Gamefreak
Space Shuttle Atlantis and Crawler Transporter © NASA